Polar vs Stytch
Merchant of Record for devs — usage-based billing, MoR, 4% + 40¢
vs. Authentication platform for B2C and B2B
Pricing tiers
Polar
Pay-as-you-go
4% + 40¢ per transaction. Cheapest Merchant-of-Record. No monthly or setup fees.
$0 base (usage-based)
Enterprise
Custom. Volume discounts for high-growth teams.
Custom
Stytch
Free
10,000 MAU. Unlimited orgs. 5 SSO/SCIM connections. 1,000 M2M tokens. 10,000 fraud fingerprints. Full auth suite.
Free
Pay as you go
Usage-based after free allowances. Volume discounts for high MAU.
$0 base (usage-based)
Enterprise
Custom. 99.99% SLA, private Slack, migration assistance, HIPAA/BAA.
Custom
Free-tier quotas head-to-head
Comparing payg on Polar vs free on Stytch.
| Metric | Polar | Stytch |
|---|---|---|
| fraud fingerprints included | — | 10000 fingerprints/month |
| m2m tokens included | — | 1000 tokens |
| mau included | — | 10000 users/month |
| organizations | — | unlimited orgs |
| sso connections included | — | 5 conns |
Features
Polar · 15 features
- Customer Portal — Self-serve subscription management.
- Feature Flags — Simple flag mgmt tied to subscription tiers.
- Framework Adapters — Next.js, BetterAuth, TS, Python, Laravel, Ruby, 11+ more.
- Fraud Protection — Chargeback + fraud handling included.
- GitHub Sponsors Import — Import existing sponsors to Polar.
- Global Tax Compliance — VAT/GST/sales tax filed by Polar.
- Hosted Checkout — Polar-hosted + embeddable checkout.
- License Keys — Generate + validate license keys for software.
- Metering — Track API calls, tokens, custom units.
- One-off Purchases — Single purchases + digital downloads.
- Open-Source Backend — Full platform code on GitHub.
- Sandbox Environment — Test transactions without charging.
- Subscriptions — Tiered plans with upgrades/downgrades.
- Usage-Based Billing — Event ingestion → meter → invoice.
- Webhooks — Resource events with HMAC signatures.
Stytch · 15 features
- B2B Auth — Multi-tenant auth: organizations, roles, JIT provisioning, enterprise SSO, SCIM.
- B2C Auth — Consumer auth: passwordless (magic links, OTP), passwords, OAuth, passkeys, WebA…
- Device Fingerprinting — Fingerprint devices at signup/login. Block bots, credential stuffing, and ATO at…
- Device-Fingerprint Risk API — Real-time risk scoring API usable even without full auth.
- Enterprise SSO (OIDC) — OIDC SSO per organization.
- Enterprise SSO (SAML) — SAML 2.0 SSO per organization. Self-serve admin portal.
- JIT Provisioning — Auto-create users in an org on first SSO sign-in.
- Machine-to-Machine — Client-credentials OAuth for service-to-service.
- OAuth / Social — Google, Apple, Microsoft, GitHub, Slack, Discord, Facebook, LinkedIn, Amazon, Bi…
- Organizations — Multi-tenant primitive with policies per org.
- Passkeys (WebAuthn) — FIDO2 passkey enrollment and authentication.
- Passwordless — Magic links (email) + OTP (email/SMS/WhatsApp) + embeddable magic links.
- RBAC — Roles and permissions per organization (B2B).
- SCIM Provisioning — Directory user/group provisioning from Okta, Azure, Google Workspace.
- Sessions — JWT or opaque session tokens. Configurable lifetime.
Developer interfaces
| Kind | Polar | Stytch |
|---|---|---|
| SDK | polar-sdk-python, @polar-sh/better-auth, @polar-sh/nextjs, @polar-sh/sdk | Android SDK, Go backend SDK, iOS SDK, Java backend SDK, JavaScript SDK, Next.js SDK, Node backend SDK, Python backend SDK, React SDK, Ruby backend SDK |
| REST | Polar REST API | B2B API, B2C API |
| MCP | Polar MCP | — |
| OTHER | Polar Checkout, Polar Webhooks | — |
Staxly is an independent catalog of developer platforms. Outbound links to Polar and Stytch are plain references to their official websites. Pricing is verified against vendor pages at publication time — reconfirm before buying.
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